Little things I wish I'd known....

Obligatory question: What tips have you learned that you wish you'd known?

For example, when I go to a busy club or other venue, I look for a seat. So many new people stumble through busy rooms, and it only increases how many textures have to load to appear in your view. It's better to sit in one place and patiently alt-cam (Alt + left mouse) to look around. You can join the party after things have rezzed.

or

When opening items from your inventory, if they look like a jumble of blocks put together in one cube, it's a bomb! Best to open it with the "build" tab open, because it is made of seperate items. Those seperate items will work individually if you open the build tab AFTER you rez the item.

I'll think of others, but what about you? What tips have you learned in your Second Life?

I'll repeat my three land "nevers" here since they are certainly worth knowing in case you don't:

Never set your land to "anyone" unless your really want anyone to be able to buy it. Even if the person you intend to sell it to is standing right next to you and there is no one else on the sim. Landbots are faster than humans.

Never abandon land. It's throwing money away. Sell it for slightly below market value (see below).

Never set your land for less than .1 per meter below the lowest listing on the For Sale Mainland page. (For example, if the first listing is selling for L$8.7, set yours for L$8.6 a meter. It will sell in minutes).

Being told what "Copy Selection" in the Edit window was and how it would save me hours on builds that I made..creating and lining up each individual prim from scratch is a bitch!

Being told how to remove the box of freebies I had been wearing on my head for 20 minutes was also nice.

When meeting a new girl, ask her to "slide down and relax" or ask her what the count was on her last smear. You can learn a lot by how they respond.

I'm sure I'll think of more but the first two I can think of are:

1. Client + Disable Client Contraints to allow you to move your camera much farther than normal

2. If you want to copy a copiable item that you only have to click Edit, then hold down the shift key and drag

I was on about 6 months before I learned either of those two.

I wish I had known about SL sooner

I envy those who were here from the start

For me there a quite a few but here are some favs.

shift&drag to copy items.....

'select texture' when wanting to change the texture on a particular side of a prim as opposed to the entire prim... it took me ages to figure that one out, but when some kind person on the forum enlightened me....it was like discovering the Holy Grail...(for me anyway)

creation-wise, I've learned so much from the tutorials that people have so kindly spent the time writing....

That is evil!

SHIFT+A and SHIFT+D to strafe left and right, respectively.

-also-

If you are totally anal and want a painless way to rez prims exactly next to each other, like floor tiles, you can't go wrong with this:

1. Place the first prim.
2. Right-click it and click Create.
3. Check the box for Copy Selection (and leave Center Copy checked).
4. Click the side of the original prim where you want the copy to rez. For example, if you want to rez a floor tile immediately to the left of your first tile, just left-click the left side.

A new copy of the original prim will appear right next to the original, with perfectly aligned coordinates.

If I had known this when making my first building, I could have done in 10 minutes which it originally took me 3 hours to do with the drag/copy-then-type-in-new-coordinates method.

EDIT: Remember to uncheck "Copy Selection" when you're done making copies, otherwise you'll drive yourself insane wondering why you're unable to build fresh prims.

1. Change the Ruler Mode to local to drag an object at it's own weird angle instead of trying to drag it a little bit X and a little bit Y at right angles all the time. I drove myself crazy until this simple concept sunk in.

2. While waiting for the world to rez after a teleport, you can navigate by the mini-map zoomed all the way in. Even if they're not visible yet in the world, other avatars show up on the mini-map. That way you can get out of the TP area but not run someone down.

3. In customizing your avatar shape, it doesn't always pay to work from the top down. Change one slider and it can effect the way the others appear -- especially in the nose area, so I tend now to jump around the edit window a bit. When I worked from the top sliders down, I tended to make the exact same choices each time. Not that I've come up with a shape I'm truly happy with for me -- my alt has a better shape, darn his hide!

That's all I can think of for now.

I learned that I can take my home and all the contents into inventory at the same time by either:
1. Click on my house and "edit". Then "draw" a box around the house and contents (it's best to do this from above) and this should highlight and select everything in the house as well as the house. Then just "take". When you want to bring it out again, just open the edit window, and rez the coalesced object from your inventory, and voila, your house is set. As long as you stay in edit, you can also move the entire bunch wherever you want.

Or.

2. Click on the house and edit, then walk through the house and while holding the shift key, click on each item. Then "take" into inventory. Rez the same way as above.

This is a huuuuuge time saver since I like to sometimes switch houses and decor.

Steer-by-mouse when walking around. Left-click somewhere on your av and hold, then walk. Moving the mouse changes direction much more quickly and precisely than the arrow or A/D keys. I found this out a few weeks in, and have used it ever since.

Oh, and opening two inventory windows to sort things into the correct folders.

Use an alt that has the minimum amount of money to test scripts that require you to grant access to your Lindens.

Keep your inventory sorted as you go along.

Take copies of everything you're building, at frequent intervals!

Name everything.

coco

1. Look at the prim counts of prefabs, furniture, and landscaping items BEFORE you buy your first parcel of land.

2. Don't be afraid to jump in and ask questions on the forums. The people here are amazingly kind and generous.

When shopping for land, right click the land and click EDIT TERRAIN, click the SHOW OWNERS box. It shows you the land in a color form for easier viewing of the entire area.

Yellow = For Sale to anyone
Green = Owned by you
Purple = Abandoned/Confiscated Parcel about to be auctioned
Blue = Group Owned Land
Red = Protected/Not for sale

QFT. Every now and then I hunt through my inventory and delete a hundred or so items named "Object", hoping none of them are important. Eventually, I'll learn.

Copy Paste for text works in and outside the viewer:
Ctrl+C Copy
Ctrl+V Paste

Ctrl+Shift+R turns everything wire frame so if you lose your favorite picture in the wall, or push something into the ground you can easily get it back.

Posting in a forum thread you like makes it easier to find later when you forgotten its title.

Logging in to the beta grid to test everything before uploading into sl saves a fortune.
keeping my textures the right size to reduce lag, and how it does

When I was new I uploaded numerous textures at 1024 pixels and larger.
I wish I had know 512 was better.
Also I wish I hadn't spent all the money on land that I had but it was fun while I had it.
I often overpaid then when I relocated and sold lost a lot of money.

I just found that

CTRL+SHFT+H teleports you home.
CTRL+SHFT+Y forces Noon.

CTRL+5 selects land from 600m. Now that's really handy!

CTRL+3 opens edit.

CTRL+8 makes me dizzy,
CTRL+9 fixes whatever I did by using CTRL+8

It has always SEEMED to me - although this might be wrong - that when dragging a prim, there is a "detante" point at the location where it's perfectly aligned with other prims. That might just be me, though - can any more experienced builder confirm this?

It would also be nicer, if perfect alignment didn't mean your structure would be pulled apart by prim drift in a few days.

yes shift+ drag while building is nice..also using the "edit linked parts" while dragging a yellow free select box around builds or attachments during editing is handy.

In the top of the edit window there are icons...one in particular is the "wand" icon...make sure all bullets are checked..rotate copy..copy selection etc..and wand on the selected prims face that you want copied. Make sure the prim you want copied is selected and make sure that you wand clearly in the middle of the face where your want the new copied prim to appear..I use this almost exsclusively now instead of shift + drag.

Tortured prims doesn't mean prims in chains... make a box..mess with tapering and shear and hollow and pathway cut and THEN..change it to a cylinder or sphere...voila....the prim is now tortured..there are certain shapes you can only accomplish this way..its quite fun.

At the top of your inventory window there is a search tab...also there's a recent inventory items tab..with its own search tab and tabs that allow you to tweak how recent or how far back you can search. This is how i quickly sort thru 46k objects to find what i need.

Cntrl + alt+ D to get the debug menu is priceless. Disabling camera constraints added with a 512 draw distance allows you to stand anywhere in a sim and see anyone else anywhere in that sim..simply by panning your camera..you don't even have to move.((I've also used this feature to see others in other sims neighboring sims)).

There used to be a trick...I can't remember it..hope somone else does...by pressing shift..or something while texturing..you can texture all side of a box simultaneously by clicking one side while pressing shift..or something..((it was shown to me once and then I forgot how ))

~Lana Tomba

That you don't have to be premium to own land....and that really, owning land is highly overrated. Rent or lease...especially your first property, because the SL land economy is NOT what it used to be.

HA! I had several parcels to sell this morning and I used this method.(Instead of giving into the mercy of landbots and being two days away from tier) Worked like a charm. Thanks Raymond.